Posts Tagged "strategist"

One-on-One Coaching is Not Always a Perfect Fit

Posted by on Feb 17, 2010 in Business Tips | 14 comments

Let me present you one of my most recent case studies.

I’ve always said (screamed aloud?) that one-on-one coaching without implementation was a complete waste of time and money.  It seems though that everyone and their brother is still rushing to hire expensive coaches that give them a lot of direction, a lot to think about but very little follow through.  Sure, they might give you a pretend spanking (ooo la la, let me grab my whip!) if / when you don’t do your “homework” but in all reality, does that kickstart you into action?  I’m betting that it doesn’t.

So, I tried it.

Yep.  I created some one-one-one time with Erin and I made it available to a select group of people — ten to be exact. I wanted to see what the experience was like from the coach / strategist side and how I could finally prove that one-on-one work without implementation was crap.

I’m going to be admitting to you what some people may call failure but what I call a success.

However, before I continue, let me make something really, really, really clear.  I have A LOT of great information, guidance, strategy, ideas, etc. to give to people. Throughout these experiences, I did and continue to provide really great service.  However, it was clear to me that there were two groups of people.  #1 — The strategy implementers and #2 — The strategy non-implementers.

A handful of these people aligned our strategy calls with direct implementation to my team.  For these people, the results paid off instantly and it became a really fun way to spend our time.  We’d dream up the next big thing and my team would make it all happen.  Just like that.

The rest of the group would get fired up on the call, be really into everything we’d discuss but they’d walk away and implement nothing.  Then, they would show up on the next call either providing a reason why they didn’t do it or they would tell me the coaching style just wasn’t working for them.  Totally cool… I didn’t take offense.  When they asked to discontinue their coaching with me, I agreed with them 100%.

Why?

The coaching style had nothing to do with it. The client was excited on the phone, I gave them fabulous ideas, I told them what they needed to do but when it came time to pass the torch to them, the torch sizzled out and died.  They didn’t do any follow through, didn’t want to hire a team to implement so therefore nothing got accomplished.  My guess is that they’ll go and hire another coach to learn the exact same thing.

What the coaching client missed was that they were firing themselves.  They had failed in their part of the bargain.  I had provided the strategy but there was zero implementation being done. No one is going to run your business for you unless you specifically hire for THAT position. Hiring a coach or a strategist is getting someone to give you ideas, tell you what to do next but the actually leaping (or walking / running / jogging) is up to YOU.  If you need ACTION, hire someone who can do a combination of both strategy and action or hire a team to work on outsourcing in your company.

So, I lost two coaching clients.  I am not at all upset or embarassed by it because I wanted to learn whether coaching on its own was effective or not and in this particular case, it was not.  It was actually highly ineffective and led to the breakdown of a potentially great scenario.  It also made me realize that I have to be really clear up front with people that I have zero interest in working with non-implementors.

What do you think?  Is coaching one-on-one without aligned action or implementation a waste of time?

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